


The Color of Glass

by sasuskies



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasuskies/pseuds/sasuskies
Summary: Sakura counts the passage of time through every sunrise. She has seen six from her place in the mountain, under the budding tree of peach. Sasuke has seen one hundred eighty-seven thousand, two hundred fifty-two.ssm day 1 prompt: stuck with you
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	The Color of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> tw: mentions of death

Ghosts are surly by nature. It’s a dictated law in the handbook of consciousness: apples fall, not fly; plants grow, more or less; and ghosts act as if they don’t have much to live for. Sasuke isn’t the paragon of congeniality either, so he isn’t one to judge. 

This one though, this one is getting on his nerves. She points a translucent finger once she enters the threshold of his forge, the happy chime of the bell echoing through the dead of night. How dare she? 

“I’m stuck.” The woman says, all accusations and defiance, as if she knows exactly what is going on. As if she has undertaken and understood the carelessly sprinkled wrath of the gods laughing at their expense up above.

Sasuke only raises an unimpressed brow, shocked by her impertinence to address him in such a way. Not even a greeting of hello, perhaps a bow; no, only plain confrontation. In his 500 years of holding shop, it is the first time someone has ever spoken to him this discourteously, both dead and the opposite. 

“And?” He challenges. The furnace is singing as he twists the rod, shaping the red glass at its tip. 

Her sudden hesitance is palpable. He feels her take a couple of steps back. As she should. “I was told you could help me?” 

“The entrance is that way,” he nods to the general direction of northwest where the river is, the doorway to the afterworld. “Walk upstream.”

“No,” the woman says. “See, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

Sasuke doesn’t look up from his rod, frowning. He crouches down, and before blowing it says, “are you sure you’re dead?”

He turns to see her examining her skin, as lucid as the glass he’s shaping. “I’m pretty sure.”

She must have been beautiful alive - most of them are - but still, even death can’t seem to hinder the painful clarity of her wide eyes. And her hair, is it truly pink, or is it just the light of the fire reflecting against the yellow panels? She melds through the background, like she is one of his sculptures done two centuries past.

“I’m Sakura,” the ghost says, her hands flexing and fisting by her sides. Sakura. How fitting.

He dusts off his apron, hours and hours of soot on his skin, and realigns his attention back to the shaping crystal. He grunts, “I’m the gatekeeper.”

“I sort of figured that. They, uh, told me you could help. The voices at the river, I mean.”

He walks into the forest, motioning for her to follow. Behind him, serving as a torch against the darkness of the night, glows his house. Sakura runs after him after a few moments, shutting the door to the forge, hurrying to keep up. He fights the urge to snort. She’s different from the rest who’ve come and gone; Hagoromo left her with enough sense to take off her shoes. 

Sasuke navigates the thick roots and damp branches until he reaches the river. Its steady hum against the sound of crickets creates a lul he knows like the back of his hand. Sanzu is an entity, voices of time memorial stuck in its endless loop. For something that signifies the flow of life, constant movement, it is an unlikely door to lead souls to the arms of death. 

It is glowing tonight under the full moon. Something ethereal and eternal, stuck between life and death; not quite as worldly, but not quite as fit for the gods. Sasuke stops once he feels the water soak the ends of his slippers. He clasps his hands at his back. “Here.”

“Don’t you have a key?” She asks from behind him.

“The key is your consciousness leaving your body. Go.”

She is affected by his clipped tone, judging by her frown. Or perhaps it’s just the thought of leaving the earth that bothers her. She takes a few steps until the water reaches her thighs, then her waist, then her chest. The current picks up tendrils of her pink hair. She takes a tentative step upstream, nerves apparent in every breath. Innate instincts do not cease, even in death, even if they have no use anymore. The ghost looks up at the moon, the tide glowing around her, then at Sasuke. She smiles, hesitant, “thank you for your help.”

She takes a deep breath again, closing her eyes as she slowly disappears below surface. 

“Psst, oi,” a voice calls out. Suigetsu is a river spirit. It would take it too far to call a midge like him a nymph. One of the many voices stuck at the entrance, he has done something horrible in his lifetime, and he is suffering by being held at arm's length from sweet oblivion. A curse rather quite like Sasuke’s, but he’s never credited the higher gods to be creative. The only difference is Sasuke gets to keep his body, while Suigetsu is nothing but a spot of awareness on the water surface.

“She tried that before,” he sleazes. “Sanzu-sama spat her right out.”

Sasuke’s lips press together, the corners of his mouth tilt down. She mentioned that, had she not? She had trouble passing. That has never happened before. Souls either become like Suigetsu, who’s a melted pot of sin, or stay intact long enough to pass through the gates. Still, Sakura is nowhere to be found. 

He hears a sputtering at the other end of the river. The top of her pink hair bobs up the water as she tries to tread to higher ground. Confused, Sasuke makes his way towards the ghost. He arrives at the same time she heaves herself up the rocks and grass that adorn the bank.

“Ghosts cannot drown,” he says, not believing what he’s seeing.

She places her green, green eyes on him. “I feel like I did.”

Odd. Very odd. “Didn’t you walk?”

“I’ve been trying since this morning.”

She cannot enter. He wasn’t certain of it earlier but he is now. 

The souls can mostly filter out on their own. The truly stupid ones have him to bother, a stationed usher that gives out directions. They march into his house, still unaware of their condition, and he walks them through the forest so they may disappear into the gates. Sakura did march into his house, but she was neither unaware nor stupid, like all the previous ones were. She knew what she was doing and she was… spit out. 

He regards her curiously. She is heaving on the ground, coughing out water every breath. She is dead, surely. There is a sheen to her skin only exposed souls possess. But she is not granted entry. It is the first time he is seeing a phenomenon such as this one.

“I’m stuck,” she says. The statement holds weight this time. It cannot be. “What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. Things like this did not happen.

“Isn’t it your job to know?”

“It’s not,” he clips, shooting her a glare. “Isn’t it your job to pass through?”

She blushes, eyebrows drawing in her confusion. It’s the first time he sees such an expression on anyone. 

He feels… incompetent. The word leaves a bitter taste in his tongue. He is not _incompetent._ “Tch,” he walks out the forest, leaving her on the ground. If she gets lost, then it’s her fault. 

The multicolored glass dangling from the ceiling greets him as he enters the forge once again. He picks up the blowpipe and settles it near the fire. There’s no use making this one. Not when there is a ghost at his heels bringing along a problem he has never encountered.

“I’m sorry for my behavior earlier.” The bell rings again. She appears. “I’m…” she pauses to find the word, “confused. Please help me.”

The glass would have to wait. There is no getting around it. Muddled and unwilling as he may be, wandering souls are still under his jurisdiction. He leads her to the house, sliding open the back door, the sound of aged wood scraping against each other easily. Sasuke walks her to the long hall. He opens the shoji to reveal a room no one has ever used, “you can sleep in here.”

“I can sleep?”

“I don’t know.” He’s said that more in a day than he did in five centuries. “But I’d prefer it if you didn’t bother me until morning.”

She enters hesitantly, bare feet skimming the mat. She flexes her fingers. A nervous tick, he guesses. “Thank you.”

With a nod, he closes the door. Morning doesn’t come sooner. 

He gets up before the light of dawn, giving up on any chances of rest. Thoughts of the woman two walls away plague his mind. Who is she? What did she do to anger the gods? Why can’t she pass? It must have been some sort of mistake.

_There are no mistakes, Sasuke-kun. Everything is as it should be._

Sasuke shakes his head hard enough to will the ringing ache away.

The morning air is a welcome discomfort as he slowly walks outside. There stands a lone peach tree at the edge of the mountain. It is only a stone’s throw away from the house he lives in, several steps down the paved path. Higher up ahead is the river, the quick changing altitude concealing it from unwanted eyes as it flows through the cracks of the rock. 

The gatekeeper sees her under the budding branches while the light of day still hides beneath the horizon. It has not been four hours since he told her to sleep and left her alone. Sasuke turns back and walks the way he came. It is simply too early to be burdened with the prospect of conversation. Especially with something he cannot figure out, caught in a conundrum he cannot comprehend.

* * *

Sakura has the nagging feeling she knows the gatekeeper from somewhere. His scowl is… familiar. Like a memory she can’t place. 

There are plenty of memories she cannot place. One moment she was driving, there was a collision - she can’t remember, something big and hard and heavy and it hurt - the next she was drowning herself in the glowing river. Even more disconcerting is that the river wouldn’t take her. The carefully suppressed panic in the gatekeeper’s face means cases like hers didn’t happen often. She could take her hypothesis further and say it didn’t happen at all.

She feels as if she is in a trance. A dream she cannot escape. But reason, of all things, tells her she isn’t. Reason tells her that she is dead, and she is stuck in the land of the living.

Sakura thinks of okaasan and otousan. She thinks of Ino, the plans they had for a movie this Wednesday. She wonders if they found her body yet. A part of her wishes they didn’t; it was in pretty bad shape when she saw it last. 

None of it seems pretty fair, least of all to Sakura. If oblivion were a choice, she’s sure she would have taken it. It’s only her luck that her choices are limited to essentially nothing. Sakura watches the sun peek past the horizon and take its place in the sky.

* * *

Sasuke places a cup of tea in front of the ghost, its heat dancing away from the ceramic. 

“Can I drink?” She gestures a slim finger towards the cup.

Again, he is faced with a blow to his dignity. He stares at her. He doesn’t know the answer himself, but he believes that if he keeps a certain kind of silence then she will believe he thought the question too foolish to entertain, rather than the actual truth. 

The ghost nods. “Right.” She picks up the cup with practiced grace. Her hands don’t pass through, to her surprise as well as his own. She lifts it and puts it to her lips. At least that question is answered. 

The cup drops with a clang. “Sorry,” she says with a grimace. “It was too hot.”

He waves a hand and the mess is gone. 

The ghost’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”

He stares at her blankly. Again. 

She blushes. He doesn’t know why. “I - uh - wanted to ask you a couple of things.”

He nods. It’s as good a time as any. He has eternity and she’s stuck here for who knows how long. 

“Why can’t I pass?”

He’s better prepared, this time. Three hours scouring through half-rotten scrolls, it would be a surprise if he isn't. “You must be a malfunction, though I’ve never encountered a case like yours.”

“A malfunction,” her lips purse in what can only be seen as distaste. “How long will I be staying here?”

“Until I fix it. I’ll visit Hagoromo tomorrow.” 

“Why not today?”

“Gods don’t work on Sundays.”

To his surprise, she lets out a small giggle. Girlish, high, like bells swayed by stray wind. “Really? But they’re gods.”

She sees his sour expression and reigns her mirth back in. “Sorry. The tea is delicious.”

Painful, painful conversation. “Hn.”

“I realized -” a pause. A nervous bite in the inside of her cheek. A hesitant attempt to make eye contact. “I don’t know your name.”

He does not give his name freely. To the people who buy his work he is merely the glassblower on the mountain cliff far up north. To the great gods he is a cog to ensure the balance of nature. To disillusioned souls he is the one who guards the gates. His functions have become him, wholly. He does not give his name freely because no one asks.

For the first time in a long while, he feels the magnitude of his loneliness. 

“Sasuke.” He answers.

She gives him a smile. A comfort. Ironic, since he should be the one who’s comforting her instead. “Nice to meet you, Sasuke-kun.”

* * *

The mountain is nothing short of monumental. A gift of gods to humankind, so they may marvel at their might, or something as pompous as that. Sakura wanders from tip to foot, left to her own devices by the scowling gatekeeper. 

She goes to the river the first chance she has. Her feet pad slowly by the rocky bank as she observes. Unlike at night when it glows with the help of the moon, in daylight it shimmers like a million crystals. It hurts Sakura’s eyes too look at it for so long. 

“It’s you again,” says the river. For something so majestic, its voice certainly falls short on expectations. 

“Yes,” Sakura says. “It’s me.”

“Didn't Sasuke help you pass?”

Sakura doesn’t catch herself before arguing, “ _you_ won’t let me pass.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“Aren’t you the river?” Sakura feels crazy enough, squatting down and talking to a body of water, without proceeding to ask its true identity.

“Hah!” The voice exclaims. “I wish.”

“You’re not?”

“Think of me as… sort of a bug. Yeah, right. I’m the louse and Sanzu-sama is the cow.” 

“That’s…”

“Self-aware? Yeah, punishment is sort of teaching me that. Turns out you become a better entity when you’re mindful of others’ feelings.”

“Huh,” Sakura manages to let out.

“Anyway, I’m Suigetsu. And you are?”

“Sakura.”

“Pretty name. You _seem_ pretty. Not that I can see you. Not that I can see anything. But you’ve got a pretty voice. You’re the ghost that can’t pass, eh. Weird. Sasuke must be shitting his pants. I’ve never heard of anything like you.”

“Um - thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’d smile at you if I could, but I can’t.”

“Why can’t you, Suigetsu-san?”

“Eternal punishment!” He booms, voice ten octaves lower. Then he schools it back to his usual phlegmy whine. “But I’m looking to be let out on good conduct. Sweet rest as soon as Sanzu-sama finally lets me through.”

“You can’t exactly be on bad conduct.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you can’t _do_ anything,” Sakura says. “Which makes it… no conduct at all.”

“Ah, fuck you, Sakura. You’re just as bad as the gatekeeper. Spoilsports, the both of you.”

“Suigetsu-san?”

“I’m off.” 

“Suigetsu-san?” She calls. No one answers. That’s that. She _did_ put a damper on his fun. 

It turns out going from tip to foot takes more than half a day. Sakura almost fell. Twice, trying to reach out and pick wild cosmos growing at the steeper, rockier part of the cliff. She wonders what would happen if she did fall. It’s not as if she could die twice. She isn’t brave enough nor stupid enough to try. 

She sees a garden patch somewhere in the middle. Wild cabbage. Naga-imo. Radish. Far below, right at the foot, are pumpkins, overgrown and over large and near rotting. The gatekeeper could be the biggest fan of vegetables but he would never be able to finish his crops on his own. 

The foot is where the trees are most evident. There are uncountable groves in her path down, but at the very bottom is where she notices them the most. A curtain, if Sakura had to guess. Tall and wide, with their leaves obstructing view, vines draped so intricately they must have been there since the beginning of time. Standing underneath, Sakura could see the light of day beat down in a thousand rays through the cracks between the leaves. 

“Wow,” she whispers, watching the light dance on her skin. 

The mountain is magical. A mountain fit for the creatures unlucky enough to stay in limbo. 

The climb up is harder than the climb down. Her shoulder grazes through a thorn while she tries to pick up a pumpkin, trying to salvage a good one for dinner so it won’t go to waste. The thorn is sharp enough to draw blood. It hurts, but surprisingly, she comes off unscathed.

The gatekeeper will be coming back soon, and she will be off and on her way. 

* * *

He makes a direct appeal in Hagoromo’s study. The old schmuck has the audacity to look as if he’s been expecting the visit. 

Sasuke stations himself in front of the heavy desk, feet folded underneath him. He looks the god in the eye. “A ghost in the northern region cannot pass to the afterworld.”

“So I've heard.” His gentle tone grates Sasuke’s nerves. Or maybe it’s not the gentle tone as much as the eternal punishment that bothers him. 

“Can’t you fix it?” Perhaps he should talk more reverently to a god as powerful, all encompassing, omnipotent, whatever, as Hagoromo, but in truth, he doesn’t like wasting energy on facades. He’s angry - has been since he woke up in this trapped existence five centuries ago - and it’s no use trying to hide it. 

“Can’t you?” The old man lilts.

“No, I am not granted that power. Mine is limited to making things fly around and opening doors. Or am I not allowed to do the last one any longer?”

“You are allowed.” 

Sasuke scoffs, “that’s nice to hear.” 

“The girl is a complicated matter. Until then, keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t wander too far.”

She hadn’t wandered at all, it would seem. Sasuke arrives back home to the intruder in his kitchen, chopping squash. He thought the squash was chopping itself, at first glance. A harder look makes him realize it is, in fact, Sakura the ghost that caused the mess, and is chopping squash. 

He slams the door with a thud. She jumps in surprise, knife flying in the air. She’d hurt herself if she wasn’t already dead. Sasuke lets the knife float back to the chopping board.

“You scared me,” she breathes out, hand on her chest.

He does guard the gates of death.

“I made dinner,” she says. “A thank you gift before I leave.”

“You’re not.” He sits.

“Excuse me?” She settles the knife down. Sasuke looks up to catch her staring at him in puzzlement.

He raises an apathetic brow. Even if, yes, he’d rather her gone than here. “You’re stuck.”

Sasuke expects a fight, an accusation, much like her first impression, but the ghost just sinks down in front of him and stares at her glass of water. “Can you -” she breathes. “Can you explain?”

“I can’t.”

“Oh,” she says. 

“Hagoromo isn’t telling me anything either,” he glares at nothing in particular. “But you’re important.”

“How come?”

“Because something is hindering your passage, be it a will or a request. No human is powerful enough to halt the flow of nature.”

“But deities are.”

Sasuke nods. “You’ll be staying here for the time being.”

“In the mountain?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she says again. He cannot read if she is disappointed, and if she is, at what aspect of the whole situation. “Okay.”

He nods, and picks up his chopsticks.

* * *

Sakura isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so she decides a visit to her parents’ home back in Owani won’t hurt. 

The mountain isn’t really that secluded. A twenty minute walk in the direction of the south reveals a small town. It’s not big, but it has a shop that sells maps, and it is enough. 

If she hops on a bus here, then she would be back home in an hour. 

She almost forgets she’s dead. The normalcy of it all. Children in the streets, their faces dirt stained. She greets the man at the counter _hello,_ only to realize five minutes too late that he keeps his silence not because he is rude, but because he can’t hear her. He must think it’s a gust of wind that opens the door, a gust of wind that knocks a singular map off the shelf. 

She rides the bus with an older lady, squeezing in, making her head go blank, remembering not to concentrate at all, lest the woman feel an invisible body pressed to hers. 

Then Sakura sits, watches, waits. She is far from the mountain, and is closer to home.

Before she knows it because the streets have become familiar. She played tag in that one. She broke her nose in that one. She broke someone else’s nose in the other. She gets off as soon as the bus comes to a screeching halt and runs up the alley. 

Her home is the same, not a stone out of place. But then again, it hasn’t been very long since she last visited. 

They must have found her body then, judging from the cloud of silence hanging over it. Okaasan and otousan are not inside. Sakura sits by baa-chan’s old rocking chair as she waits for them to come home.

She hears them before she sees them. Haruno Mebuki’s wracked sobs, Kizashi’s anguished wails. They are dressed in black. Clothes of mourning. Sakura all but races to hug them, tell them it’s alright, she’s fine, but then they pass through her, like she is the afternoon wind and not the daughter they just cremated.

“Mom,” Sakura whispers. Her mother cannot hear.

“Mom,” she says, louder this time.

They enter the house. In its dim languor, it is not the house she grew up in. Her father makes jokes, her mother rolls her eyes, all in familiar scents and happy tunes. This house is a coffin for the living.

Sakura shakes her mother, her father, but their bodies are already taken by sobs that they do not notice their daughter. 

She feels metal in her throat.

She does not want to see anymore. She does not want to see the altar with her picture. She doesn’t want to smell burning incense, or hear stories told about her goodness. She now knows why ghosts are wired to proceed to the river. Detours like this one hurt even more than dying itself.

* * *

It’s been a week since Hagoromo told him to keep an eye on her. He’s filled his time otherwise in matters that don’t involve the ghost. 

Sasuke sits by the riverbank for hours on end, accounting the daily traffic in the notebook by his side. He’d have to calculate the data for the biannual report. A headache’s definition, if there ever is one. He visited Hagoromo one more time, this time longer than the last, for another appeal for untainted souls. An argument that had been going on for decades, without any visible end. Then he passed to the afterworld, fixed the defects of the path, before it spat him out. 32 minutes and 14 seconds is his limit, as always. 

Then Sasuke trained, sharpened his tachi by the edge of the rocky cliff.

Sakura is there, pink hair staining his peripheral, but never _there_. If he ate at a certain time, he’d be sure of no intrusions. She must be duly practicing the same. Sasuke appreciates that. 

She hovers in the background. The gatekeeper doesn’t know what she spends her time doing, but it must be boring to a deathly degree to be stuck in a mountain in no one’s company but his, which can be further equated to no one’s company at all. 

He doesn’t think much of it though. Not until she pokes his shoulder while he’s sitting by the river. 

“Hello,” she greets. Her clothes have changed since the first midnight. He doesn’t know where she procured the golden yukata she is wearing, but it fits the curve of her like it’s tailored specifically for her stature. Noticing his confusion, she pinches the cloth near her neck. “I found this in one closets. Should I not have…”

“I’ve never seen that before.”

“I’ll wear them, then.”

“You already are.”

“You’re,” she notes lightly. She takes a seat beside him on the rock, straining too close to personal space. “Not very amiable.”

He scoffs. She isn’t wrong and she isn’t accusing.

“Are you here all alone?”

He keeps his silence. She’s sharp enough to take it as a yes.

“I visited my family.”

This information surprises him. “How?”

“I took a bus the next town over.”

“You took the bus,” he repeats.

“It’s been three days since then? Counting the sunrises. If the calendar hasn’t changed.”

“The calendar hasn’t changed.”

“Oh, good.”

The ghost is melancholic. It grates on his nerves, the way death changes people. Somehow, he knows the girl in front of him was not the sort to delve into a week long bout of sadness when she was alive.

“Can I ask you a bunch of stuff?” 

He doesn’t have a choice either way. She hammers straight on. 

“What exactly are you?”

“I’m the gatekeeper.”

“Yes, that I surmised. But what are you? You’re not a ghost, but you’re not human either, which makes you a god, though a minor one, seeing as there are limits to your power.”

“Do you still need me in this conversation?”

She looks sheepish. Her thoughts run away with her. “Yes, please.”

“I’m a god,” Sasuke says slowly. “But a minor one.”

She tilts her head. “I’ve never fashioned gods to be discontent.”

“The concept of power roots from discontent itself.”

“You’re right,” she says, sounding far away. “And do you? Root power from discontent, I mean.”

“Yes,” he doesn’t know why he keeps answering. But the ghost is… there is something about her that is familiar, like he’s known her all his life instead the blink in actuality, and it makes his tongue looser than it would normally be. “In the past,” he doesn’t know when exactly, all he knows is that it happened. The memory is as vague as the scenery past the fog. “Though I regretted it. Not anymore.”

A set of pearly white canines, “now you spend your days sitting by the riverbank and growing mountain cabbage.”

An amused sigh escapes him. “I’m working.”

She marvels at the sight in front of her, previously concealed by her unawareness.“Oh, so that’s how it’s done.” The ghosts are lining up at the river, their faces blank shrouds as they slowly filter out the land of the living. “Do you think if I try again I might be able to pass?”

He gives her a wry look.

“I’m trying again.” She announces. 

She’s sputtering on all fours in front of his rock a minute later.

She looks up at him, eyes red with water. “Glad I amused you.”

He notices that the right part of his lip has curled upward and he quickly schools it back to neutrality. She flops on her back, arm outstretched to the noon sun. Hours pass.

* * *

Sasuke isn’t bad company, and seeing as he’s the only person she can talk to, she should at least try to see his feats, but really, there is no extra effort needed on her part. Yes, he may be slightly reclusive, a little curt, maybe mean, but Sakura genuinely enjoys their little chats. 

He’s experienced the world change, and will continue to. There is a wisdom with him that she has never seen before, and it makes her want to ask him about everything.

It takes her mind of her family, the guilt of leaving them even if she didn’t mean to, and the look in their eyes as they passed through her. She feels like Sasuke understands.

He says to her that night, as they are eating supper, “there are no miracles in situations like ours.”

“Gods grant miracles,” she says, feeling like a philosopher by the second. “But who grants miracles to gods?”

Sasuke smirks, boyish, young, eternal, “you’re not a god.”

Sakura laughs into her bowl. 

* * *

That night, he dreams. 

It is not the dreams of red and black. Of iron and blood, trapped in a faraway place. Screams that can’t be heard, and screams that are too loud.

No, he dreams of fallen petals, straw between teeth, how summer drizzle feels on shoulders. 

He dreams of: “Sasuke-kun,” a voice, as soft as clouds. There, and then not. A laugh. Bells. Windchimes. A home as big as six tatami mats. He dreams in vivid color. 

And when he wakes, the dream is gone. 

* * *

She does not visit her parents again. She can’t bring herself to see Ino or her teachers. There are plenty of pastimes that can be taken up in the mountain, so she busies herself with that. First, she tends to the weeds near the house. After half a day of basking under the sun, she reads. Sasuke has scrolls and books that date back to the fourteenth century, she almost pisses herself with excitement. 

After the initial delight of that has waned, she wanders around again, hoping to find a hobby to entertain her. The gatekeeper’s forge at the back of his house is a resplendent thing, she almost asks him to teach her how to blow glass. He’d probably never let her touch it within a six foot pole.

She wanted to become a doctor when she was alive - even got as far as first year medical school. It was a driving force, made her feel useful. Sakura thinks of doing this for centuries. Waiting for it to be over, with no purpose whatsoever. She feels dizzy just considering the possibility. 

The mystery about the house is not its owner, nor its supernatural surroundings. The mystery of the house is its floors. Underneath a stray panel of wood, there are small boxes that contain fineries from another era. Jewelry, silk, paint. 

The walls too, have crevices. The first night of trying and failing to sleep made her give up altogether. Her light feet made her clumsier than usual, causing her to fall. The portion of her bedroom floor opened from the force of it. She felt the hollow gap from under the mat. 

That’s when she saw the golden yukata. The night after that she saw another one in pink. After, a kanzashi of sakura blossoms, stashed away like a secret.

* * *

Sakura is like a pest that is never off his back, after the first week of silence. A switch has been flicked. Everything seems overly on. A lint. Not exactly distracting _,_ but _there,_ which is distraction enough.

He feels a sort of protective responsibility towards her, the lint. He does not want another person to suffer the same fate he is suffering. He doesn’t know how long Hagoromo is going to keep this game up either. He doesn’t know his intentions, his aim, his goal. Because to Sasuke, it all looks pretty pointless. What good would Sakura do staying in the land of the living? What would it bring her but agony?

“Should I open an inn while I’m at it?”

Hagoromo pours him a cup of black tea. “You’re merry today, Sasuke.”

Sasuke wants to strangle him. What punishment would he receive that could outshine the one he’s already serving?

“If you want me to accommodate every mistake you refuse to fix then I might as well -”

“Sasuke,” the god booms. His voice is hard. A god’s voice. It’s enough to make the hair at the back of Sasuke’s neck stand. The opened shoji behind Hagoromo reveals the sea as it beats its waves on the shore. It is the only thing Sasuke hears for a handful of moments. “If you are still angry about the untainted souls -”

“I’m not.”

The older god lets out a defeated sigh. “Very well.”

A waste of time, much like everything else. Sasuke leaves as soon as he can.

He sees Sakura the moment he opens the door.

She’s holding a bowl of cut up apples. Her cheeks are full, and it takes her a full beat to swallow before she says, “you weren’t there a moment ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t behind the door. But now you’re inside. How?”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

“That I wasn’t behind the door.”

She frowns into her fork-stabbed fruit. “Because you weren’t. If you were I’d have seen you.”

Her badgering is too much. She’s too observant for her own good. Too aware for a ghost. If she wasn’t she might have been able to pass. “You’re annoying,” he says, and leaves her staring dumbfounded at his wake.

Sasuke faces the following day without having slept a wink. His dreams have gotten stranger. Only he can’t recall what they were about or why they affected him so badly. The only tangible evidence that they ever happened is the bitter taste they leave at the back of his throat.

He sees her by the peach tree that’s starting to bloom. He doesn’t come near. Instead, he fishes out an old board of shogi and sets it out on the engawa as the afternoon is fading and he has finished all his tasks.

She is approaching the house, a stick in hand. Her shirt bellows in the summer wind. Sakura drops it once she sees him sitting in front of the board. 

He looks at her. She approaches hesitantly, cautiously. She eyes him like he’s going to snap at her again. He hurt her. He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much. Sasuke doesn’t invite her to play, but she sits in front of him anyway, reading his intent. 

It is silent. By the 32nd move, she is trouncing him too badly that it's embarrassing. 

Her rook moves to eat his bishop. “Sasuke-kun,” Her voice is defeated. For the first time since that night he sees her as what she is: dead. He sometimes forgets that the girl in his house is anything less than human, with her vibrating energy and bright eyes. She gets bouts of melancholy from time to time when by the river, but she seems adamant to get past it. “I’m sorry for overstaying my welcome.”

He moves two squares over. A blunder once he sets the piece down. She’s going to eat him alive. “You’re not overstaying your welcome,” he says quietly. He almost isn’t aware of what is escaping his mouth, too absorbed by the game and how he might salvage his remaining pieces.

Her hand stops, halfway picking up another one of his pawns. “I’m not?”

Sasuke mutters, without thinking, “you were never really welcome to begin with.”

He stops once he hears the words. He went and did it. Five centuries of deficient human contact and he is a recluse. A troglodyte, illiterate. Doesn’t know what to fucking say.

She laughs. 

Somewhere at the back of his head there is a windchime. It hurts. It doesn’t. Sakura is laughing. 

She’s laughing as she beats him, laughing as he sets up the board for another round which he’s sure he won’t lose, laughing as he sips his now-cold tea.

All the while he watches. Without noticing, he accounts the difference between the creases that show when she is upset and the creases that show when she is happy. One for every eye, another between her brows because she furrowed them somewhere along the way, between her full cheeks and the ends of her smile. There are five, all in all. And there will never be more. He finds himself in an unguarded bout of gratitude for that.

He moves a pawn.

“I’m sorry,” she isn’t. She moves one of hers. The game starts again. “It gets really lonely and I thought we were friends -”

“We are,” he finds himself admitting.

Her smile is nothing less than winning. She is human again.

“I can open doors.” Sasuke says.

A _tick_ as she drops a general. “That’s nice?”

“No,” he stands. She looks up at him curiously. He slides open the shoji with more force than necessary. “I can open doors.”

“Holy fuck.”

* * *

Sasuke can take himself to any place in the world yet he refuses to do so, and instead stays holed up in his large mountain with no one but the anguished voices in the river and an aimless ghost to keep him company.

“What’s holding you back?” She prods. She won’t let up. He’s too masochistic for his own good. Anywhere in the _world._

“Nothing,” he turns his back on her, refocusing his attention to the furnace. Very like the scene from their first meeting. It’s been a month since then. 31 sunrises. “I’m not supposed to leave here.”

“Fuck the ghosts.”

“That’s brave to say,” he mutters. “For a ghost.”

“Oh _please._ Anywhere in the _world,_ as long as it’s got a door. Imagine that.”

“Yes,” the fire sings. “Imagine that.”

“I’d go to Antarctica.” Sakura announces, sitting by the work desk she really shouldn’t go near, as an inexperienced glass handler. But she can’t bruise or scrape, so she’ll be fine.

“Yes,” he mutters again. She isn’t sure if he’s talking to the glass or to her. “Are there doors in Antarctica?”

“Research stations! Dozens of them. Whales and research stations, nothing is better, Sasuke-kun.”

“I’m sure.”

* * *

He is skipping sea stones by the riverbank when she waltzes by. 

“Good morning, Sasuke-kun,” she greets. Her furrowed brow tells him she is not quite sure what he’s doing.

He stops. One skip. Two. Three. Gone. 

He shows her the contents of his palm when she draws near. The glowing rocks are beautiful in their crystalline purity, translucent in a way the ghost sometimes isn’t.

“What’s - oh,” realization dawns on her. There are legends about gods among mortals. Most of them are not true, but there are always exceptions, bullseye predictions. “Can I help?”

He hands her half of his load. “Make sure they pass.”

“Of course.” 

“And the big ones?” There are dozens at the side, almost neglected.

“I’ll deliver them myself.” He says.

She looks at him then, with something in her eyes he can’t read. She smiles the same time the heavens decide to reveal the sun.

* * *

After Sasuke has resigned to bed, Sakura roams around the house. Days are almost blurring by in startling speed, idle as they may be. 

She runs her hands through the walls and hits a snag. There, in the gap between the kitchen and the hall, is a rusted notebook.

Sakura opens it, and by some miracle the pages don’t wither away. It smells of peppermint oil and charcoal. Someone must have wanted it preserved.

Sakura opens it, and on the first page are the words: _My bones grow brittle, and soon I will see my love once again._

* * *

He is exhausted once his head hits the pillow, sleep claiming him without hesitation.

The first thing he sees is pink hair. Strands of it in his face. Long and thick that some of it enter his mouth. He grapples it blindly.

“Good morning,” it is a woman lying beside him. It is a dream, he knows, but the woman’s voice cannot be fake.

He feels different. Less weary, more… angry. He has a purpose. His brother. He has a brother. He remembers now. He’s not supposed to be here.

His hands draw up to trace the woman’s face. Eyes large, lips soft, ears small. He knows her. 

“Sasuke-kun,” she says. 

Sakura.

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a cute little one-shot. then it developed into this monster. multi chaps are scary man. penny for your thoughts?


End file.
